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Hence the not talking to him thing.
Though, if I were being honest, I was still sending him GIFs every time I thought of him.
Like now, for instance.
I pulled up my phone, searched up “bastard” in the search bar, and then ended up choosing one that said, “my best friend thinks you’re mean” to him with a girl flipping off the camera.
Grinning, I shoved the phone into my back pocket, then looked at my friend.
When no emotion lit across her face, I turned back to the exam room paint color.
I eyed the new paint with a critical eye.
I may be doing the boss, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t expect absolute perfection out of what would be known as my second home.
It’d been a full month and a half since the incident with my brothers.
And in that month and a half, a lot of things had changed.
Such as, I was now the proud, permanent owner of a donkey named Hubert.
Hubert was now fully off milk, and was eating hay in the pen that was a permanent setup outside of our clinic.
Along with Hubert came a three-legged fainting goat named Bertha, and a full-size horse named Dottie whom I’d saved from the glue factory, and a broken-winged goose named Trouble.
They were the clinic’s mascots, and everyone loved them.
Everyone, that was, but Diana.
Not that she disliked them as much as she was upset that I seemed to be saving, and collecting, animals that could use some help. She didn’t dislike having them around. She just hated the circumstances that they came to be with me. Each time that she saw them was a reminder of how hard this profession was.
I wouldn’t be able to save them all. We both knew that.
And she also thought I had too soft of a heart, and that if I wasn’t careful, I’d have a whole freakin’ zoo.
Sadly, she was right.
I seemed to be collecting the animals nobody wanted.
Because, at one point in time, I was once unwanted, too.
Though, Etienne had done nothing but prove to me that was no longer the case for me. I was wanted.
By him.
He showed me every single day.
We didn’t end up getting married.
Not that he didn’t try, constantly, to “wife me up.” Though, those were Conrad’s words, not mine.
Why was Conrad involved? Because Etienne had gotten even sneakier when I’d thwarted his plans—I’d caught on rather quickly that he’d liked the idea of me being his—and I’d shut it down.
Etienne had gotten so sneaky at this point that I was never sure where the bait would be—including with Conrad, one of the better things to come out of Jenna and Jeffery. Both people that seemed to get worse each and every time I came into contact with them.
At this point, I wasn’t sure that Conrad wasn’t just immaculately conceived.
I couldn’t do the marrying thing quite yet. I had a few things I needed to accomplish on my own—and that was not bringing down the ship with him tied to me.
I knew, without a doubt, that my stepmother and family weren’t done. Even if my dad decided to grow a pair when it came to them, he wouldn’t be able to stop it all.
“Are you paying attention?”
Diana’s voice sounded dull.
I finally stopped studying the paint stains on the sheet-protected wood floor and turned my gaze to her.
“Kind of,” I admitted. “I was thinking about Conrad.”
That got me a smile. The first one that I’d seen from her today.
It was small, barely there even, but it was there.
“I’m having a bad day,” she muttered, looking at the ceiling in our new exam room. She lay on the table that was supposed to support one hundred and fifty-plus pounds of canine. “And I can’t seem to shake it.”
Diana suffered from depression. Sometimes she was perfectly good. Sometimes she wasn’t.
I wasn’t sure if this was one of those times or not, but I knew exactly how to get her into a better mood. I’d been doing what I could for so long that at this point it was second nature for me.
And now that I could afford to provide it for her…
“Come on,” I suggested. “Get in the car.”
It was a chilling feeling to see her acting so dejected.
I’d seen her like this at most five times since I’d known her.
And all of those times, it’d scared the absolute shit out of me.
All of the men were gone on some poker run with a local MC, or I’d have called Bain immediately. But him knowing Diana was like this, and him being hundreds of miles away, wouldn’t be good for him.
So, I decided to be the best friend today that took care of her.
I’d do what I needed to, which included canceling all of our appointments for the day, and spend the day watching over her until the boys got home tonight and Bain could take over.
